It's 5am; the alrm's going off. Time for another nut-crunching day of hard labor in the sweaty streets of Cambridge Mass. It's August. It already feels like it's about 80 degrees, even down in your cellar appartment. Get up and get showered, out the door, coffee slurping out of your Cumberland Farms travel mug, doughnut sticking out of your pie-hole, as you try to catch the 6:10 train to South Station. You roll into the parking lot just as the train is arriving and make it on just by a blonde C-hair. By 6:40 you will be rolling into South Station and if your timing is perfect, and you can run downstairs to the Red Line, and catch the absolute first subway to Ashmont, then get of at Kendall Square, and sprint like Bob's your uncle 6 blocks, you will make it to the job-site on time. Barely. However, if you miss the absolute first Red Line train, your whole plan is screwed. You'll be 4 minutes late and have to face the consternation of the Frenchman, Bert, the job Super. He knows you've been late a lot lately and has no sympathy whatsoever for your plight. He, and the rest of the crazy French -Canadian bastards who are doing the sheetrocking on the job, have been up since about 2am, having commuted from Manchester N.H. He doesn't care that you'd rather wind a tech screw into your left testicle than drive, or park, in Boston.
The fuckin' commuter train is like a sauna and you didn't even get a chance to pick up the Globe yet. The forecast calls for another scorcher: Hot, Hazy and humid, up in the 90's. What better way to spend the day than up six stories in a scaffolding, putting up sheathing like a slave on a big hot brick building.
But wait. Not today. At that very minute, you hear a voice. 'The voice'. It starts out kind of faint, and you look at the guy next to you as if he said it. But he's sleeping into his Sports Section. Then you hear it again. The voice says, "Fuck it, there ain't no way you're going to work today". What. "You heard me. Don't go in. What's the difference. There's 40 other guys. You won't be missed. Bert won't even realise you're gone". But I have to. It's my responsibility. "All you have to do is get off the train, walk across the platform, instead of going down the escalator, keep going straight out the door and take a right. There'll be a newspaper machine on your right. Pick up the Globe, like you should have done a half-hour ago. Keep walking across the channel until you come to that breakfast place over by the 'All-Day' parking; you know the one, with the big piles of onions on the griddle that simmer all morning. Get the #2 breakfast. Read the paper and have a nice big coffee". But, but...you say. "But nothing. Then you go back in town and head for the North End. There's a park up there..Columbus Park or something. You sit there and read that paper until it's finished. Buy another coffee if you need, but do not go near the Red Line or anywhere near Cambridge".
The voice goes on like this for a while, in great specifics about how you should alternatively spend your morning, rather than sweating your sack off sheetrocking. You, of course, have your doubts, being a responsible, practical young man. But soon the train pulls slowly around the corner from Mass Pike to Chinatown. The sun shines of the metal skyline of the Financial district in just a certain way, and you say to yourself, "he's right. There ain't no way I'm going to work today".
Long story, short: North End, through the Theatre District, 'oh look a used record shop', 'lunch in Chinatown'?. Great idea. 'Look at that. The 1:40 Attleborough Line leaves for Sharon in about 15 minutes. How about that. You catch the train back out of town having had a most satisfactory morning of 'any-fucking-thing-but work' in your favorite city, and have a most restful nap on the uncrowded return trip, dreaming of not-sheetrocking.
When you get back to the pad, you decide that a nice dip in your kindly landlords' pool might be a perfect capper to a perfect day. You get into your shorts and slip into the pool just as your favorite old Uncle J.J. comes home from a hard day at the job-site, with a big box of Heinekins. Lord, does it get any better? He slips one into your hand as you shlump into your favorite floatie. You slip the beer into the coozie after a satisfying swallow, and say to yourself, with utter conviction: "to think, I could have been working today".
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